Namco wanted to burn Nintendo?

**Daitokuji** · 04 May 2006, 03:10 PM

Was reading this article at Sega Base about the saturn and for a bit they talked about they Playstation and how Nintendo burned Sony. Then it mentioned this "Sony scored a major coup by getting Namco into its console fold early on, but then again Namco needed no prodding - it was still looking for ways to burn Nintendo over the MegaDrive development affair back in 1990." What am I missing and what was this shit about?

**Drewbacca** · 04 May 2006, 03:27 PM

Scandalous.

**Nick** · 04 May 2006, 03:32 PM

I remember the whole story is in the book Game Over. It has something to do with Namco releasing Tetris with Atari under the Tengen label to avoid paying Nintendo licensing fees. And then Nintendo crushed Namco.

**Diff-chan** · 04 May 2006, 03:34 PM

Nintendo fucked over everybody when they were the top dog. That's why Sony had so many developers and Nintendo had a 3rd rate Dream Team for N64.

**Fe 26** · 04 May 2006, 03:37 PM

Pretty much.

**Geo** · 04 May 2006, 04:16 PM

Originally Posted by diffusionx

Nintendo fucked over everybody when they were the top dog. That's why Sony had so many developers and Nintendo had a 3rd rate Dream Team for N64.

**Melf** · 04 May 2006, 05:19 PM

It has a lot to do with Nintendo's ironclad licensing agreements during the NES period. A company could only release 2 games a year (Konami and Atari got around this by getting a whole second license and releasing games under the Ultra and Tengen labels) and Nintendo controlling the manufacturing of cartridges. Namco had enjoyed preferential treatment when it originally signed on as a NES licensee, but when they went to renew the contract, Yamauchi decided to treat them like everyone else. This pissed off Namco's president, Hideyuki Nakamura, and he jumped on board as a Sega licensee when Nintendo lost its licensing case in court. It took a while for the rift between the two companies to heal, but not as long as it did between Nintendo and Square.